I have been submitting a lot of changes over the last few months to someone who has the majority of memorials in the cemetery. I know someone who has talked to her but that was a couple of years ago & she was older he said. These changes of mine have not been accepted by her. They are auto accepted in the 21 days time. And I've asked her to transfer a few to me since they are my family & she hasn't responded (I know how to get those now that she hasn't responded). So I'm guessing she's gone herself.

How do you submit a user that has passed away? What are the rules of when Findagrave takes all the memorials from someone? Do we need to submit an obituary? I only have her first name but this guy I know that has talked to her might have more info.

I've always liked this picture. I am assuming it was done in 1762. Looks like the stone is slate & I like the carving. I am just guessing it's slate but is anyone familiar with this stone type of carving technique? I especially like the face and the expression. Thank you for any information.

Even if I type in the exact spelling, I get results that also start with those letters. So for example if I am searching for a last name of "Frank", the results come back with "Franks", "Franklin", "Frankenberg", etc. I don't want those and would prefer to eliminate them in my search. I've tried putting it in quotes but that didn't change the results.

It would be nice to be able to leave notes about cemeteries.

Some of our local cemeteries have maps. Some don't. Most cemeteries in Mass are documented in the Massachusetts Historical Commission and at least include sketches. I tried to include these sketches in a couple of cemetery pages as pictures and the administrator removed them as 'not meeting standards for photos.'

But a place to leave notes would be useful. For example, the Linwood Cemetery in Weston, Mass (91179) is big enough at 50 acres to show up in Google Maps with named roads! Neat, I thought; what a time saver. When I arrived there were printed maps! Also great, I grabbed one. Then I mapped my progress on OpenStreetMaps as I walked.

And then I noted: OSM didn't match Google Maps. The hand-out didn't match Google Maps - the names of streets didn't even match. Nor did any of the roads match the plot information I had.

Best I can tell, the OSM information is old, old. The Google information was taken at the beginning of the most recent renovations (satellite view shows construction shacks and temporary roads). And any old plot information should be ignored.

If we could leave a note: "Grab a map at the entrance as Google and OSM maps are not up to date."

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Where tomb/crypts used to be maybe?

After uploading a fulfilled photo request I started researching several other photographs I had taken of nearby stones with the same surname. I enter a name, no picture, so I click Add_picture - and the webpage comes back with, "There is an open photo request on this grave; are you fulfilling it?"

Well, yeah. But I didn't see an open request on this record. I opened a separate session and checked open requests for this cemetery - nope, not for this individual. Then I open this individual - yes, now there is an open photo request on this view, this time. But it still doesn't show against the cemetery.

And it isn't a recent request that just popped in. I have found examples of this behavior where the request is years old. There's one case where I uploaded a photo and was told there was an open request and a problem report against this record - neither of which had shown up on the count for the cemetery.

I've reported this as a bug.

I did try to reach out to Find a Grave support after coming across some distant unnamed children and/or family members in my family tree and all they said was if the record/gravestone is in a cemetery with dates we support you adding it to Find a Grave. And that they ask that you continue to research it so it can be updated with correct information. Just want to see what other people have done so if I do make a memorial that it's done correctly.

This isn’t a troll or some sort of creepypasta btw

On Find A Grave a few years ago, a friend and I came across a group of odd pages. It was a Soviet family who died in like the late 70s ish? They were Siberian and the pages included B/W photos of them. The description gave a very graphic description of how they died and it always creeped us out.

A few years later we both remembered this and we tried to find them on Find a Grave but no luck. We checked every death in the 1970s in Russia, literally gone. We even went on a Russian subreddit to ask if anyone had heard of the story, nothing - they thought we were trolling. It was like the family had been wiped.

Could the pages have been trolls that were taken down? Does anyone recognise this? Please help. I’ve posted this also on r/ancestry

Is it just me, or does the veteran status sometimes disappear from memorials? I've added it several times for my grandfather (a memorial that I manage), but when I check back on the memorial weeks later I find that the veteran status has fallen off.

Anyone else notice the same thing? Is this a known issue?

How can I find my biological fathers grave who was buried by Washington State in the us...how can I find it without paying money?

I just ran into this problem yesterday while fulfilling photo requests. I can only upload 3 photos. On the 4th I get an error saying I’m not allowed to add any more photos. It used to allow 5.

This is annoying - I have headstone photos with names on 4 sides.

Has anyone else run into this?

The word “beloved “ is common on headstones and I always say it in my head as be-lov-ed (3 syllables) but it seems wrong and I correct myself and repeat it as be-loved (2 syllables).

Your thoughts, please?

I've just recently started to search for graves and would appreciate any hints. Here are things I've already sussed out.

1. Read all sides of the stones. Including the top.Sometimes new names are on the back. Sometimes a second family is on the back - in one case I found a different family with the same name on the other side. A four-sided monument might have four families.
2. Read all of the names on the stone.A stone for Smith might also have an entry for son-in-law Jones.
3. Carry a stiff plastic brush, a small hand broom, a bright lamp, and a plastic trowel. Even if you don't plan on digging, these are helpful for moving debris for a good picture. Gloves and clippers if you are in the wilderness.
4. Talk to staff where you find them. It can't hurt.Many thanks to the staff of Woodlawn Cemetery who found me wandering and talked to me. It turned out the cemetery had complete records on-site from 1830 and was willing to look them up and willing to walk the cemetery to show the site. The grave I was looking for led to a 2 hour discussion and to point 5,
5. Sorry, sometimes you can't do it by yourself.At Woodlawn some graves don't have surnames. I guess you either knew where the grave was, or checked in at the Chapel/Office. Others have no stones. Which means that, today, you don't find these graves without getting a plot plan ahead of time. And many cemeteries in New England have no maps, so even if FindaGrave says see plot 5520, good luck with that.
6. But since Findagrave is a database, you can search your cemetery, for plot "5", and maybe get lucky and get a hit for plot 5518 or 5540, maybe a hit with either a picture or a GPS that will help your search.
7. Often the people posting a request are not very good at making a request and a bit of research can help the search.Is the mother/father/sibling of the request in the cemetery record? Do they have a photo or plot number?

My oldest request is eight years old in Blue Ridge Memorial Gardens in Prosperity, WV. I guess there are no gravers around, the cemetery has 800+ open requests dating back to 2011. It does appear the vast majority of requests have no plot information, but mine does.

The request most distant from me at 7000+ miles is at Keren War Cemetery in Keren, Eritrea.

Obviously there are find a gravers who manage many of my family members, and that's totally fine by me. But one family member in particular is really, really special to me, and so I reached out to the person managing explaining my relationship and how I'd love to take over his page. I haven't heard back yet, and I know that some people are completely inactive from the site, but I question this particular person because I recently made suggestions, and they accepted them. So, I guess I'm just wondering if you've ran into find a gravers who aren't as generous. Has anyone ever rejected your transfer request?

Edit: After waiting another week, the memorial was transferred to me. 😊

Hi all, I ran into my first problem today, so reported it with my explanation. After I've done that, do I fulfill the request or unclaim it? Just wasn't completely sure.

I’m a newb to taking photos for memorials. I’ve uploaded photos for just one so far. The request list for that cemetery numbers 61, and about 20 are not in this cemetery. Should I notify the requestor?

I know I can just delete them from my list, but I had a trauma compels me to do … something. Sixty years ago my family lived in another state. My older six-year-old brother drowned and he was buried there. We moved to another state. Fast forward 40 years (20 years ago now), Mom mentioned she wanted Brother exhumed and reburied to where she lived. I said I’d get the process started and she gave me the cemetery ‘s name.

Called the cemetery. They looked him up and said, “He’s not here.” I was stunned. I called Mom and told her. Poor Mom was traumatized. Her cries of “Why would someone take him?!” and others were gut wrenching to hear.

Spent three days with dialup internet trying to find him. Ready to give up, one site came up and there he was and at that cemetery! Called the cemetery back and they went back into the old records and found him. The loser who put his information in the computer so butchered his name it was unrecognizable.

Yesterday I worked with the young men in their cemetery office. They checked their computer and went through the original cards and found two. They were great.

How do you recommend handle this kindly?

If A uploads a photo and B transcribes it, and it was not already on the site, does it create a memorial, and if so, who gets credit for it? Sorry if this is a stupid question, I don't get involved much with the transcribing stuff.

I went to visit family at a cemetery the other day and recently I’ve been starting to take pictures of other graves just to help out and bulk upload them.

But I just thought I’d look back at “memorials I manage”, and saw that someone thought it would be funny to instead of writing the woman’s name, writing “richard nixon” not even in caps.

Are there really trolls on freaking find a grave? How often do people here misuse the site and is there a way to report the person? The rest of my photos were transcribed normally, but I guess I just thought we were all adults here respecting those before us. I still think that, but I guess now i don’t feel immune to it lol

Do you have to pay for Flowers?

Where can i find them to transcribe them! I visited my grandparents grave today to get a picture to upload, then decided to get some pictures of others to upload. Uploaded like 50 pictures, my first bulk upload, they all said “transcription ready”, but now I can’t find them? Do they get sent to other people to transcribe or can I do them myself? I especially want to get the picture on my grandparents graves profile

Hello. Does anyone know what this symbol is?

My apologies if this isn’t an appropriate ask. I’ve not done this before. I am trying to find someone that lives around the Golden Gate National Cemetery that would be willing to get me a rubbing of my grandmothers grave. I don’t know how much someone would charge for this. Anyway, if anyone has recommendations or ideas of how this can be done, I would really appreciate it. BTW, I live in Salt Lake City if anyone needs a photo or rubbing or cleaning of a grave in this area, I would be happy to help. Please accept this picture from my favorite cemetery, Mt. Olivet in SLC, as tax.

Has anyone noticed that the Find A Grave website is faster and more reliable than the actual app?

I've noticed on the app you can view open requests, but the app doesn't actually show what's already claimed without tapping into it first.

Whereas the actual website tells you what's already claimed and what's not when you're scrolling through the requests.

Also, the app seems to take it's time updating how many photos you've taken and what is posted. Whereas the website updates immediately.

You can't even view your messages on the app, but you can on the website. It would be good for these things to be implemented into the app, but until it does I think I will just keep using the website through a browser on my phone.

When you’re working on the grave of a married woman, and the middle initial on their stone begins with the same letter her maiden name begins with, see if you can find out what her middle was. A lot of the time the middle initial represents her maiden name, not her actual middle name. In rarer cases, the middle initial might represent a previous married name.

So there are a lot of cases where you’ll see, say, “Edna Q. Quinn Johnson” on a Find A Grave entry, when it should be “Edna J. Quinn Johnson.”

I ask this question because I made a photo request for two burials in another state. It was fulfilled but there was no GPS information included with the photo.

It is the first time I've seen a photo of these two gravemarkers and I am greatful for that. I was hoping to have also had GPS info so that I could find and visit these two graves using the GPS functionality of the app when I visit that state again.

What is/are everyone's thoughts on this?

I've recently been photographic large portions of some local cemeteries in large batches. Sometimes about 500 photos a week. I upload them to be transcribed, and after 7 days, they become available to the community to transcribe. The problem with this is that many transcribers are extremely haphazard.

When I transcribe photos, I always do due diligence before creating a new memorial: checking to see if there is a record under a different name than on the headstone, usually by searching the birth and death dates in the cemetery. If I do find one, I'll transcribe it under that. I've noticed that many transcribers do not do their do diligence, and create new memorials without checking first. This just led to dozens of duplicate memorials being uploaded to one of these cemeteries, which I now have to back track and correct, and I feel quite overwhelmed by it.

Is there a way that we can fix this? I feel like if people are putting in identical birth and death dates to someone already in the cemetery, Find a Grave should be able to flag it before creating a duplicate. Or maybe let me turn off outside transcription? I don't know what to do, besides staggering how I upload photos, but it is frustrating.

I’m not a frequent user of find a grave, nor am I familiar with exactly how the website works, so please excuse if this is a stupid question.

Out of curiosity, I decided to look up my paternal Grandfather on the website, and I actually found that someone had added his grave with its location etc to the website! I found this a bit strange because my Grandfather died in 2009 and no one in our family would be interested in putting this sort of thing up. Furthermore, my Grandfathers full legal name was listed on the grave posting, despite this not being the case on his actual grave stone. I decided to check my maternal Grandfather’s grave too and found the same thing, his legal name was on the grave listing despite a different name being used on his gravestone. His name was Seamus, but depending on the situation he could also go by the English translation James. Seamus is the name on his gravestone, but James is the name on find a grave. Both listings were put up by the same person, and when I looked at his profile it said he was a 25 year old man from Australia. I found it a bit strange how this gentleman was posting about grave sites all the way across the world over in Ireland, but even stranger was that he has posted over 14,000,000 other graves on his profile. I have no idea how this is even possible or how he could have gotten the real names lol.

I’d like to add here that I’m not in any way annoyed and I don’t want the listings taken down, I’m just absolutely bewildered as to how this is even possible. Is there some sort of public database I’m missing?

Thanks